Tom’s tunes are truly Olympian!

Fiona Finch

The Rio games will be a showcase for his work and he will be monitoring results closely.

However, his top talents are not sporting, but musical.

The composer and music producer is conquering the equestrian world with compositions for international and national dressage events and is busy putting the final touches to compositions for the GB freestyle dressage team.

Tom, 29, who attended Stonyhurst College and lived in Hurst Green, near Longridge, moved to London and now lives near Garstang, studied composition and performance at the Leeds College of Music.

After graduating he knew he was keen to compose, but the equestrian specialism happened quite by chance.

He explained his dad Jeremy, proprietor of Fenway Labradors near Garstang, was watching a dressage event on TV and alerted Tom, thinking he would like the music.

Tom thought he could do better and contacted Myerscough College to see if he could meet with dressage eventers.

He said: “I asked if I could speak to any dressage riders just to tell them my idea and what they thought of it and that’s how it got started.”

His fame spread and Tom has now helped a record number of riders to success in both Olympic and European contests.

His music was the accompaniment to five freestyle gold medal winning performances by Charlotte Dujardin on Valegro, including a freestyle world record clinched in 2014 at the Olympia World Cup Dressage contest, the 2014 World Equestrian Games, the 2014 World Cup Dressage in Lyon,the 2013 European Dressage Championships and the London 2012 Olympic Dressage finals.

He has also composed for Carl Hester and for American, Spanish, Russian and Swedish riders.

After studying videos of horse and rider in performance Tom starts with an analysis of tempo changes which then informs his composition.